*Karina Smirnoff* a six-time U.S. world ballroom-dancing champion and
professional dancer-starlet on one of the most popular shows on TV, Dancing
with the Stars, is nude in the May edition of *Playboy Magazine*. Karina is
sitting in an upscale pizza place outside Los Angeles, talking about
Jennifer… Lopez—whom she coached for the 2004 flick Shall We
Dance?—when from out of nowhere, who should appear? "Karina!" says J.
Lo, sidling up in a pair of beautiful booty-hugging blue jeans.
"Jennifer!" Karina responds. "I was just talking about you!" Karina
stands, and heads turn as the two stunners give each other a nice…long…
squeeze. For the next five minutes, La Lopez gushes about Karina, then bids
her adieu with a kiss. Eyes welling, Karina smiles. "That," she says,
"was a perfect moment." Karina's day has come. The tautly woven
performer is shaking her moneymaker these days—designing shoes for Bearpaw,
promoting her new fitness DVD, Shape Up With Karina Smirnoff, and her makeup
line with Girlactik Beauty. She also just opened her first dance studio. With
rows of trophies from international competitions, she's more highly
decorated than General Patton. "There's no luck," says Karina.
"There's only opportunity and preparation. I've worked my butt off."
Has she ever. Smirnoff was born 33 years ago in what is now Kharkiv, Ukraine
to a Jewish Greek dad and a Russian mother. "Couldn't get a feistier
combination than that, could you?" she laughs. As a child, she dove into
gymnastics, ballet and ice-skating. At 11 she entered ballroom competitions,
and three years later the family—which has no relation to the vodka
concern—moved to the Bronx. "We had zero money and had to start from
scratch," she recalls. "My mom and I cleaned hair salons for 60 bucks a
week while my dad distributed newspapers by foot because we had no car."
Karina supplemented the salon income with ballroom-dancing gigs at Russian
restaurants so she could pay for dance lessons. By the time she was at
Fordham University, double majoring in economics and information systems
programming, she was already touring the world's stages. Then came Dancing
with the Stars. Karina made her debut on season three, during which she
famously began a two-year-long liaison with partner Mario Lopez. These days,
however, Karina shares her most private dances with Brad Penny, a major
league pitcher with the Detroit Tigers whom she met through mutual friend
Chuck Liddell, former Ultimate Fighting Championship light heavyweight title
holder. Among Karina's other interests are boxing, skydiving and shooting
guns. As for her body, Karina has her own definition of sexy. You can see it
all over these pages, but here it is in her own words: "Sexy is the
confident energy a person produces. Sexy is the comfortable feeling of being
who you are. Sexy is not just having beautiful lips, legs and arms; it's
beyond that. Sexy is soul." See more of Karina Smirnoff hot nude body in
the Playboy Cyberclub. See all the hot nude celebs of Playboy